


can't settle for an echo

by DrowningInStarlight



Category: Campaign (Podcast), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Wars Fusion, Clone Wars, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Order 66 (Star Wars), Prequel Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:35:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26043589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrowningInStarlight/pseuds/DrowningInStarlight
Summary: The galaxy is changing.
Relationships: Margaret/Travis Matagot
Comments: 5
Kudos: 8





	can't settle for an echo

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AwkwardDuckProducktions](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AwkwardDuckProducktions/gifts).



> this is the result of anansi and i basically writing a skyjacks star wars au in dms, and i had to properly write out at least a little of it. this ones for you, you're an evil genius who suggested margaret getting order 66-ed >:( <3
> 
> title from evergreen by the dirt poor robins

The moment Margaret steps off the gunship onto the landing stage outside the Jedi Temple, she knows that Travis is around somewhere. She quickly scans the area, but she can’t _see_ him. She just knows he’s here. Jedi powers have their advantages. 

It isn’t unusual for him to come and meet her after she gets back from whatever part of the war she was sent to this time. When they first met, she’d been a Jedi Knight wanting to do _more,_ frustrated by the bureaucracy and politics of Coruscant that prevented her from helping people the way she knew she could, and he was a con-man turned small time smuggler. He had the leads and the contacts, she had the drive to do something with the information. They’d been a good team. Solving problems, helping people. Really, really good. 

Then, all at once, she wasn’t just a Jedi Knight anymore— she was a commanding officer in a brutal and unforgiving war. She’d kissed him before being sent out on her first mission, and he’d kissed her when she got back. 

Now he comes to meet her when she gets home. It feels like everything that made up her old life has fallen away in the time since the war started, changed so irrevocably as to be lost forever, but not Travis Matagot. 

It hadn’t been a good mission, this time. It had been… it had been a massacre. A disaster it had been her responsibility to prevent, and she had _failed._ It had felt like a set up. She’d spent more than enough time playing in the underworlds of Coruscant to recognise the feeling. Something doesn’t feel _right._ But she bites her lip, and tries to put it out of her mind. She still has a duty to fulfill, for a moment. 

“Sir,” her clone commander says behind her. “Are you okay?” 

“Is anyone, after that?” she says, turning to look at him and the rest of her squadron, filing out of the gunship behind her. The remains of her squadron, that is. They’re all exhausted, many injured, armour scratched and covered in mud and blood, hobbling onto the landing stage. “How are we doing, folks?” she asks. 

“Could be worse,” the commander answers. “But perhaps not by very much.” 

“Yeah.” These are her people, and she’d failed them. “You’re dismissed. Go get sorted out, and I’m— well. I’m sorry.” 

“Just make sure you take care of yourself too,” another clone says. 

“I will,” she promises. They each clap her on the shoulder or pat her on the back as they move off, and she tries not to think about the people who’ll never be there to do that again. 

At least, as the crowd filters away, there’s less emotional turmoil in the air. Reading other people’s emotions was her speciality, a force power that had developed when she was young enough to not realise it was the force. It was useful, for delicate negotiations and schemes. In a warzone, it was exhausting. 

Now the landing stage is empty, she’s more aware than ever of the person lurking just out of sight around the corner of the building. She should go and make a report straight away, she knows that. But it’s not like the news hasn’t already spread. The Council can wait for an hour or two. 

She marches over, and rounds the corner. They’re hidden from the landing stages now, and it’s darker away from the guiding lights now dusk is falling. Travis is leaning against the wall, doing some stupid trick with sabbac cards, and part of her feels better just for seeing him. 

“Fancy seeing you here,” he says, neatly stacking the cards and sliding them into his pocket. His words are light, but he’s looking at her in a way which makes Margaret think that perhaps he was worried he’d never see her again. “How was the war?” 

“You haven’t checked the holonet recently?” she says distantly. 

“Yeah,” he admits. “I saw it. I thought…” he cuts himself off. “Coruscant's much quieter when you’re not around, y’know.” 

“You calling me a troublemaker, Matagot?” 

“Well, what can I say?” he says. “If the shoes fits.” 

She just looks at him for a moment. Travis plays his emotions close to his chest, but it’s easy to see that he looks tired. And then, of course, there’s…. 

She doesn’t make a habit of reading people’s emotions one on one. It’s draining, and it’s an invasion of people’s privacy— her skills are something that she takes very seriously. But there’s no way that she could avoid feeling how much Travis loves her. He doesn’t make any secret of it, really— well, that isn’t exactly true. He keeps his secret quite tidily from everyone but her. She knows that’s deliberate, and it scares her. It scares her because...

“Walk with me?” she asks, and Travis stops leaning on the wall and takes her arm obligingly. 

“Lead the way,” he says, and she does. They move off through the delicate, manicured streets of Upper Coruscant. It’s so different from the battlefield where she spent the last few weeks that it almost makes her feel dizzy. What passes for darkness sets in fast on Coruscant, and it’s late. 

Travis opens his mouth, and Margaret interrupts, “Don’t ask— don’t ask me about the war, Travis. I can’t think about it right now. I don’t want to— how was your job?” 

He squeezes her arm, almost imperceptibly. This is what she’s talking about— he knows the danger of loving a Jedi. She knows he does. And yet… 

“It’s hard to find cargo right now that isn’t clanker parts or weapons,” he says. “And _obviously,_ I’m not running that right now.” 

“So…?” 

“You have to promise not to laugh at me.”

“You know I can’t promise that,” she says, and her grin feels almost real. 

He grins back, his face shadowy in the deepening dusk. “Potatoes.” 

“No way,” she says, “Not noted con man Travis Matagot reduced to running a hold full of potatoes?” 

“Oh, you know it.” 

She laughs, and it almost turns into a sob, so she says “Can I kiss you?” 

“Of course,” he says, and then they both shoot the standard cursory glance around themselves to make sure no one’s around. They’re alone, cloaked in darkness, so she kisses him and he puts his arms around her waist and holds her and for a moment she lets herself believe that they aren’t doomed. 

“Hey,” he says quietly, letting go of her. “You good? Apart from… well, the obvious.” 

“Thought I was the empath here,” she says restlessly. 

“It’s amazing what you pick up after a week with just potatoes to talk to,” he says, and she pushes his shoulder lightly. “No. I kind of happen to know you really well.” 

“It’s…” she struggles to organise her words for a moment. It feels stupid to say it outloud, but if there’s anyone in the world who’s used to trusting her weird instincts, then it’s Travis. “It feels like there’s something _wrong._ With the war, with all of this. I don’t know what, but I can just… feel it.” 

Travis looks serious, more serious than Margaret’s used to seeing him. “I think you’re right,” he says. “I… hear things. Things people wouldn’t tell a Jedi.” 

“I know,” Margaret says. “That’s why we work together.” 

“Oh, you mean apart from the really great—” 

“Well, hasn't _someone_ got a high opinion of himself,” she says, but she doesn’t really mean it. It’s just habit, from both of them. The dynamic they’re comfortable with. “What things?” 

“Nothing concrete, it’s all just whispers. But it’s never anything good.” 

“We’ll look into it,” Margaret says, trying to sound confident. “That’s what we do.” 

“Right,” Travis says. “We’ll work it out.” 

They both look at each other for a long moment. The lights of the city around them reflect in Travis’s eyes like the stars the atmosphere is too polluted to let you see. 

“Together,” she says. “We’ll cause so much trouble.” 

“Of course we will,” Travis agrees. “That’s, like, our whole thing.” 

(They still have time before Order 66. But there’s no such thing as enough time to say goodbye.)

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr as [drowninginstarlights!](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/drowninginstarlights)


End file.
